Why Ephesians 5 Does Not Teach Rigid Gender Roles

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord . . .  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . ."
--Ephesians 5:21-22, 25


Complementarianism--belief that men and women are ontologically equal but have different roles (usually in marriage but sometimes outside of it)

Egalitarianism--belief that men and women are ontologically equal and should also be allowed to interchangeably take roles (in marriage and general society)


I have never heard any pastor or theologian attempt to argue that Ephesians 5 instructs husbands to love their wives but not the inverse, but I have seen plenty of preachers insist that all wives should submit to their husbands and that the opposite approach or an egalitarian one is faulty or sinful--and, of course, many of them disagree on what it even means for wives to submit to husbands to begin with.  This is all highly suspicious considering that Paul only one verse before the "complementarian" section of Ephesians just told his general Christian readers to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21).  Now, a complementarian might argue that verse 21 extends to everyone while the remainder of the chapter applies only to married people of either gender, so let me examine the ramifications of this.

If wives are to submit to husbands and couples are to be discouraged from sharing a more egalitarian mutual submission because God designed men to "lead" and women to "follow", then the only logical conclusion is that husbands are to love their wives but mutual love is not in accordance with God's intentions.  That is the only way to consistently interpret the passage.  Either both members of a marriage can and should love and submit to each other or wives should submit to husbands without the opposite ever occurring and husbands should love their wives, with the same rigid gender-specificity here applying only to men, but you can't have it both ways.

Are wives not to love their husbands?  Are husbands never to submit to their wives?  Are spouses not supposed to walk side by side together in love and mutuality instead of having one spouse arbitrarily lead the other simply because of his gender?  Christian egalitarianism posits that personal gifting, ability, and sometimes preference determine what role is suitable or optimal for individuals and that spouses can switch "roles" and share them as is best for their convenience and personal skills and as they decide through mutual consent.  Complementarians expect all men or women to act a certain way (which they tend to dispute the specifics of when one presses them for more than a superficial explanation of complementarianism) when men and women clearly do not all have the same supposed gender-specific characteristics, longings, abilities, reactions, and perspectives that people often attribute to them.

Also, the only gender roles that people can legitimately debate the Biblical basis of are these two roles in marriage.  Never does the Bible state, for instance, that men should work to provide for their families while women must remain in the home.  It never teaches that men should be stoic and fierce while women should be quiet and passionate.  Nor does it once suggest that the genders be largely separated outside of marriage and kept occupied with gender-specific tasks.

Now, I will not straw man complementarians by claiming that they believe that men and women hold different degrees of intrinsic ontological value, because complementarianism does not deny that God created all men and all women equally in his image (Genesis 1:26-27).  That is not the issue egalitarians debate complementarians over, as the controversy centers around the alleged gender roles complementarianism proclaims.  However, complementarians often do perpetuate myths like the idea that males are hypersexual and "hypervisual" beings while women are far less sexual or, as some call it, "visual" by nature (this notion has infuriated men and women alike), the idea that men and women can't ultimately understand each other due to assumed differences between them, and that married Christians should isolate themselves from members of the opposite gender because they are or will likely be "dangerous" to their marriages.  I mean, I have honestly to my recollection never heard of a complementarian pastor that tries to actively and publicly deconstruct gender stereotypes or that admires friendship between the two genders in the same way that he would same-gender friendship.  So while not opposing the theological fact of the equal value of both genders, the Christians that believe in gender roles can damage individuals of both genders with the stereotypes (therefore committing the fallacy of composition) and misinformed assumptions (therefore begging the question) that can permeate society and common complementarian practice and ideology.

In reality, the case for complementarianism from Ephesians 5, if taken to its only logical conclusion, results in a doctrine that tells husbands to unilaterally love their wives with wives not reciprocating this love--because if wives are to submit but husbands are not, then the same is inescapably true about the husband's obligation to love; it is an obligation only intended for one gender and not the other.  Complementarian philosophy also usually appeals to arbitrary cultural constructs and subjective personal anecdotes as support, neither of which amount to anything more than random and unverifiable preferences and experiences which hold no value in the quest for truth.  When it comes to Biblical and rational support, complementarianism is deficient and inconsistent.

A husband and wife can stand alongside each other in mutuality
instead of confining themselves to rigid gender roles inherited
from various dimensions of culture and very inconsistent
interpretations of the Bible.